Purge of Dissidence
by Palamecian
Summary: The dragon returns to take back again the last champions of her will. He sees the last cycle as incomplete. He remembers our bargain. And those who serve him still, trapped in eternity, are those who died in the twelfth cycle, slain by my own manikins. Why, why does he do this? Has he a task of his own to fulfill? This nightmare realm he traps us all in, where are we?


**I**

"INFINITY"

* * *

_The breeze is clean_, was the Warrior's first thought when he opened his eyes to the new world spread out before him.  
Possibilities are endless, he said to himself in his mind.  
And he couldn't help it, he smiled.  
Smiling? It had been something he'd seen rarely in his old world, in the war of the gods, except from the likes of Tidus and Zidane and Cecil.  
This, he — was new, and clean and free.  
He closed his eyes. A cool breeze brushed his face. He took off his helmet and fell into the softness of relief.

[_Petty fool_.]

His eyes shot open in surprise and his whole body felt like it had been struck by a thousand bolts of lightning.  
What...?  
The shade of a ruined land flitted past his sight. The words of thought wouldn't form in his mind but he was tense with dreaded suspicion and anger and... what was it?

[Pain.]

He whipped around.  
And then he saw the dragon.  
The world around him exploded into a million shards of screaming glass.  
What? — _No_. He drew his blade in and spun around, trying to find his attacker in the midst of the crystal chaos.

[Foolish little one, he seeks to draw his blade against a dragon-god.]

"What sorcery is this?" he cried.

[Sorcery is merely the will of petty fools as you.]

A blast and he was thrown to the ground, except there was no ground. He kept falling and falling into an abyss of pain and darkness. The fire burned at his back but it wasn't fire. It was ice, and it was scorching, and it was consuming everything, even him... _even him..._ The new world froze into crystal around him. And he was freezing, too, he could feel the flaming cold claw at his arms and legs, taking his helpless body from him until all he had was his eyes.  
The golden dragon reared up from the swirling crystal and for a moment the Warrior thought he'd could see into his eyes.

_No, leave me be, _the Warrior thought dazedly.

LEAVE ME BE, screamed his voice.  
The dragon paused indecisively for an eternity within a tiny second.

LEAVE HERE. _You are gone_.  
Another explosion as the golden being roared. The crystal world shattered and the Warrior hit black.

_[A cycle is infinite... surely you all must understand that by now.]_

Wandering. In darkness. Where is the light?

_Cosmos_, he begged an answer from the goddess in his dreaming.

When he regained himself he saw nothing but endless darkness. Confused, he thrust out his hand to push away whatever was blocking his sight. His fingers were met only with empty air. Alarmed, he scrambled to sit up.

_Am I blind_? he wondered.

No... he could see his hand and arm. He was trapped somewhere.  
This was all the dragon's doing. The great, destructive, holy golden dragon. Shinryu.

"_A cycle is infinite._" Were the words part of a dream or were they real?

Could the dragon possibly mean to resurrect the cycles of war? The thoughts raced through his mind.  
A quiet clap of something on stone alerted him to his dark surroundings. He stiffened.  
_Ah, but what does it matter, I am helpless here._He was doomed to never see the one who trapped him.

"Goodness. I wasn't expecting company in prison," a man said behind him.

The Warrior froze. That voice from cycles ago. Or one cycle ago.  
"You," the Warrior said, without turning. His hand was on his sword. _Why_? A memory tugged at the back of his subconscious mind.  
"And you," came the reply.  
A name connected to the voice in the Warrior's mind.  
"Kain?"

* * *

Cecil Harvey had always been one to hide his darker side. Always been one to seek the light, to keep it. Dissidia had changed that, of course. It had forced him to recall the darkness and use it alongside his light, the light his father had granted him.  
But even then, he'd tried to keep the light on top of the wavering balance.  
Now, though, he was beginning to feel again the doubt, the fear and the hate, that had always heralded the dark knight self in the back of his mind.  
Hatred for the gods, Chaos, even Cosmos, for dragging him into the endless war. Fear, too.  
_How long have I been gone_? The uncertainty stung his chest. It had felt like years in Dissidia. What if it had been years? What if it was like Rydia's Feymarch, where time passed more slowly than outside, on the Blue Planet? It could have been... decades, _centuries_.  
Kain and Golbez had said something about cycles of war. Twelve then when the manikins ruled and they'd betrayed him, thirteen at the last. He couldn't remember anything before the twelfth, but those memories could be among those he'd lost in the endless battles... Like how he'd forgotten Rosa and Ceodore completely. He never wanted to forget them again. He never wanted to lose them again.  
_I'll have to find out eventually_. But his legs wouldn't carry him away from the hill, where he stood frozen, staring into the distant sunset behind his home castle.  
Baron.  
The sky seemed to hang uncertainly between day and night. The clouds were dyed half the deepening blue of nightfall and half sunset's wispy gold. Half dark and half light.  
_Are you a coward_?  
_No_. He didn't give his darker side a chance to bite back. He started down the hill and wondered why, of all places, Cosmos had left him here.  
Randomness? But it never seemed as if anything was ever random no matter where he was.  
He thought of Rosa. Her smile and the warmth of her embrace. And Ceodore. If he'd missed the rest of Ceodore's childhood, missed watching his son grow up at last...? _Damn gods_.  
_But it isn't really their fault that they were forced to summon warriors. The dragon..._  
Suddenly he froze. He was standing within clear sight of Baron. It didn't look too different from the one he'd known.  
Walk, ordered his mind.  
Is this what Kain and Golbez felt when they wouldn't come home? Fear?  
_Go._  
Fear that they could never be forgiven, even when they had already been?  
_You are afraid of what you may find_.  
I am, he knew.  
He was still standing in the desert, watching his kingdom fall into night.  
_My son_, whispered a voice in his ear.  
He wasn't sure he'd really heard it. KluYa. Father?  
_Go home, where I could not_.  
He knew then that he'd really heard his father. He broke into a run. Family. A blurry line of reasoning formed out of the mix of thoughts that passed through his mind.  
Rosa. Ceodore. Cid. Rydia. Edge. Yang. Edward. All of them were finally here. He would see them all again, and maybe, maybe Golbez — Theodor, and Kain, too. Even if Kain had betrayed him again there, it had saved them all, hadn't it, that plan of his? I am sorry. Forgive me, he'd said.  
"I've forgiven everyone," Cecil told himself as he paused in the woods, the gates of Baron in the distance, finding some comfort in hearing his own voice, further reassurance that he was back. "Now... let them... forgive me, and accept me even if I have left them for too long."  
"I — I do," whispered a voice behind him.  
He stopped suddenly. Whirled around. He wasn't as alone as he'd... as he'd thought.  
Rosa dropped the flowers she'd held and ran forward, throwing her arms around Cecil's neck. He held her back and they cried silently into each other, like the old days.

[THE CHILD DREAMS WHAT A MERE CHILD WOULD]  
Cecil looked up in shock. A burst of white flame brutally jerked him away from Rosa.  
No! he heard himself call. _Wai_—  
Then he was in bed.  
As the dream faded back from Cecil's eyes he realised that he was staring up at a painted ceiling. Blue. Painted clouds.  
He sat up, foggy-minded. Soft silk sheets rustled as he moved. His fingers dug into the blanket, as if to make sure that they were real. He reached up and brushed a stray strand of hair away from his face. Sunlight was streaming into the room, warming and dizzying.  
Then he looked around, and saw Rosa and Ceodore curled up asleep beside him.

* * *

**AN: Hello, thanks for giving PoD a chance. (It disregards Confessions of the Creator but takes place after the end of the thirteenth cycle, by the way.)**

**I've been trying to write this story for months, and here, finally, is the first chapter. I'm not sure how long I can sustain this thing, though...**

**Please drop a comment, maybe? The box is just a glance down.**


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